Fucked Up are comfortably one of the best bands of the 21st century. What other band has a back catalogue that deep yet is still producing A-grade material? What band marries that with an absolutely life changing live show, an experience youāll never forgot? (The answer is Deerhunter but thatās for another day.)
Iāve a lot of memories tied up with this band, mostly through one friend. He got me into them a year after Hidden World was released, when Fucked Up were still going by their pseudonyms and still felt very mysterious to two teenagers from rural Ireland. From the instant Pink Eyesā came in on āCrusadesā I was hooked. This was as loud and fast as a lot of the punk I was listening to but had more scope and ambition beyond that.
I still refer back to Hidden World to this day. That run of āCrusadesā into āDavid Comes To Lifeā into āInvisible Leaderā is such a rush and after that the album barely lets up. Chemistry Of Common Life came out a few months later and I was hooked for life. The title track is unstoppable, the capstone to an almost perfect album.
It was around this time that we got our hands on the compilations Epics In Minutes and Couple Tracks and heard āNo Pasaranā, āPoliceā, āGenerationā and all the other ragers weād missed out on while living in small town Ireland. Barely a bad track on either album and it added fuel to the fire of our love for the band.
āYear Of The Oxā came out that year and we were obsessed beyond measure. Itās still one of my favourite things theyāve ever done. I used to get really bad anxiety working a shit bar job for four years while trying to keep myself going during college and often Iād come home and put it on the turntable and scream along for ten or so minutes until I couldnāt breathe or see. This live version absolutely GOES too.
April 16th 2011 is a date that lives in my memory. Record Store Day 2011 was when the Triskel reopened in Cork and our favourite record shop moved in there. My pal and I queued up to buy the Davidās Town compilation and then ran to my cousinās house to drink cans and yell at each other. This was the teaser album to what has become one of my top twenty albums of all time; David Comes To Life.
This album is perfect. Every track, every crunching guitar, every roar. If I listen to it now I canāt hear it piecemeal, I have to listen to the whole thing. It makes me feel more alive and has dragged me out of a lot of dark places over the years. āOne More Nightā has gotten me through more bad times than I can count. Even without that emotional connection the music just absolutely mashes you flat every time, relentless guitars piled on top of each other with Damien Abrahams shouting in your ear for eighty minutes. It doesnāt get better than this.
And after that, a wobble. Glass Boys was released and my pals and I just couldnāt get a handle on it. Still canāt to this day. If I said Iāve listened to the album ten times I would be lying to you. My LP copy has been played once. I might revisit it after this thread but I couldnāt guarantee it.
By now we were in 2015 and Iād still never seen Fucked Up live. My friend who got me into the band had moved to L.A. and got to see them there, reporting that they were incredible. I went to Primavera Barcelona that year with a little trepidation after not enjoying Glass Boys. I spent the half hour before they came on stage ringing my pal in L.A. and getting steadily more excited about seeing them. I neednāt have worried.
That set was incredible. I spent most of it roaring every word, occasionally into Damienās face, just exhilarated the whole time. Afterwards I bumped into him and he thanked me for singing along because it was a hot day and he was after a long flight and he needed the help. That made my weekend and when I went to their second set of the weekend in a club on the final night Damien recognised me and jumped down to let me scream my heart out all over again.
That was it for Fucked Up and I for a few years. I was less sad and didnāt need them to drag me out of a hole as often as I did. I lived in a shared house with a shared turntable so didnāt subject my housemates to them. There were rumblings from their camp about Damien being dissatisfied with the band and I genuinely didnāt think theyād make another album.
Thank fuck they proved me wrong with Dose Your Dreams. Itās an album that Iām still digging through, finding more layers as I go. There are some tracks I donāt like (āMechanical Bullā Iām looking at you) but otherwise itās almost the equal of the David Comes To Life and on a par with their first two. I got to see them live in Ireland around this time too and spent it stage diving and singing with Damien again. I saw them later that year at Primavera and my GF came with me. She said she saw a different side to me that day, lost in abandon, shouting louder than sheād ever heard me.
Theyāre still putting out incredible music. I might think that three quarters of āYear Of The Horseā is just the audiobook of āThe Witcherā badly set to music but the first twenty minutes of it are the best twenty minutes of music Iāve heard this year. I genuinely teared up when I heard the piano intro for the first time in headphones while making bottles for my daughter. Iāve listened to it nearly every day since, the massive chords crushing me every time.
My pal got on to me a few weeks ago when the vinyl orders came out. I hadnāt heard from him for a few months but he was so excited about the new (and old) records. Fourteen years after we first heard them weāve both grown up, had kids and gotten on with our adult lives. Our joint love for the band still bonds us together and I thank Fucked Up for keeping us in touch. One of the best bands of the last twenty years uniting us time and time again.
